Illinois Treasurer Dan Rutherford fires 3 administrators

SPRINGFIELD — State Treasurer Dan Rutherford fired three senior administrators in his office last week after they were identified as subjects in a probe by the treasurer’s inspector general, Rutherford’s office confirmed Monday.

Rutherford dismissed Patrick Z. Carlson, George Daglas and Ashvin Lad on July 2 after they allegedly were found to have violated timekeeping policies and falsified records, according to termination letters submitted to the three by Rutherford’s chief legal counsel.

Additionally, Carlson was alleged to have engaged in “workplace harassment,” though details were not spelled out in the letter Carlson received from Neil Olson, Rutherford’s general counsel and ethics officer.

It wasn’t clear from the termination letters, first disclosed by the Associated Press, whether the allegations against the three related in any way to the allegations of sexual harassment and political work on state time that were contained in a lawsuit filed earlier this year against Rutherford by an ex-administrator in his office.

That lawsuit, initially filed in the run-up to the March primary, caused Rutherford’s Republican gubernatorial campaign to collapse and spelled an end to his hold on the treasurer’s office, which he has held since 2011.

Rutherford spokeswoman Mary Francis Bragiel confirmed that Carlson, Daglas and Lad had been fired but declined to offer any other explanation for their departures, saying their terminations were personnel matters.

Carlson, the treasurer’s former manager of logistics, was paid $99,000; Daglas, the former director of marketing and community affairs, was paid $71,500; and Lad, the treasurer’s former director of the Invest in Illinois and the Illinois Funds divisions, made $80,000, Bragiel said.

None of the three, who all had been employed by Rutherford since 2011, could be reached Monday evening.